


And that's how I chose to remember it.

by enmity



Category: Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X, Tales of Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 00:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16902852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: But she had never learned how to believe him.





	And that's how I chose to remember it.

**Author's Note:**

> i just wanted to be told, '[you are my everything](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KkTgvY4PT4)'.

“Who is that?” Meltia tilted her head at the stranger, who mirrored her gesture with the same amount of casual curiosity and mild disinterest. He stood knock-kneed, and she could see him strain to keep his shoulders straight, braced them in perpetuation for an invisible something. The sight was familiar in a way that made her grimace, and she did, though she knew it was rude.

“Why,” her new father said, hand placed on her shoulder, “that’s your brother, of course.”

“Brother?”

“I was here first,” said the boy, who was thirteen and looked like her, except when he didn’t. The word had sounded uneasy on her tongue. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Dios.”

“This is Meltia,” the General said in her place. “This poor girl has lost her parents. I will care for her in their stead. I expect the two of you will get along?” He looked at him, then back at her with expectant eyes, and it hadn’t really been a question.

She had no choice, in any case.

Her father – theirs, now – pushed gently on the small of her back, goading. “Come now, Dios. Give your new sister a hug.”

He waited until she took the first step, then elected to shake her hand instead.

“Sister,” echoed Dios, and it sounded like a lie already.

—

While Dios fought, Meltia studied. Cooped up in her room she ran her fingertips down comfortable mathematical equations as Dios moved smartly in his uniform, every spin of his heel and twist of his blade as practiced and calculated as the flourished strike of her pen as she wrote herself closer to the General’s recognition, searching for the approving shine in his old eyes.

Again and again and again.

“Clever girl,” he told her, as he had many times before, and there was a hole in her chest where she came to drop the kindest of his words, the warm lingering press of his hand as he reached to ruffle her hair.

It wasn’t enough and it would never be enough, so long as she kept on remembering her mother and the snow and the word _pity_ , and of course she did. She’d never stopped feeling as cold as she had that day when he’d found her. When Dios had taken up the sword to the General’s enthusiastic approval it had felt as though he’d come to Meltia and lanced her with that very same blade – smiling as she watched her bleed red and jealousy by his feet.

Meltia smiled stiffly, and sat herself very straight. “Thank you, Father.”

He set aside the tea, the report card. “Your brother is going to war soon.”

“I see,” she said uncertainly to her reflection in the cup, and swallowed. Then she looked up. “Father?”

“Meltia,” said her father, and though his expression was unfamiliar, his voice was fond as he addressed her. She didn’t know much about fondness, but she thought, surely, this must be it, and felt the growing warmth in her chest to be joy – it had to be. “I shall give you an offer. Will you listen?”

And she did.

—

She liked Dios. Dios who she was jealous of and who rarely visited and said things neither of them believed. Things like _Father is proud of you_ or _The war will be over soon_ or even, _I’ve missed you, Meltia._ Her name, and not a word which carried so many pretenses. It was too easy to be comfortable with the idea they were not siblings, never were and would never learn to be, and that was uncomfortable in and of itself.

Yet she said, “Dios,” and reciprocated when he pressed his hand over her knuckles as her pen hovered at the edge of an unfinished equation, forgotten now. His scars had become familiar against the unblemished alabaster of her skin, and Meltia allowed herself to fluster, to remember. For once she did not feel so frigid. But she was sincere when she added, “You don’t really mean that.”

Dios smiled and it was not the smile of a soldier fighting for a country in a losing war, and neither was it the smile of a brother. “Would it be better if I showed you, then?”

She stood and leaned over, allowing him. She always had her eyes closed; always stood knock-kneed, straining her shoulders in preparation for something terrible, something invisible. Surely one day it would catch up with them and swallow them whole, whispering of all the things they had taken and given and shared between themselves and which they did not deserve.

Their kiss was short and quiet, a shared secret. She pulled away first and said, “The cannon will finish building soon.”

“That’s wonderful, Meltia! The General would be pleased.”

Another hollow, placating lie.

And so when she smiled and whispered, “I’ve missed you too, Dios,” she must really just be raising one in return.

—

Meltia sat folded on the cold floor, gutted, unmoving. The strength had left her body.

“You’re not a monster,” Dios told her, kneeling, his face set in an arduous grimace.

But she had never learned how to believe him.


End file.
